We thought someone was looking after that!

The statement used in the headline, voiced by a spokesperson for the Town of Walkerton during the drinking water crisis, struck me.  

It reflected the notion that we as Canadians had come to expect essential things such as safe water, a healthy environment and sound planning were being taken care of.  

These systems had been developed over a 100-year period as government scientists, academics, civil servants and politicians worked together to create sound programs and policies to ensure residents would not have to worry about the most essential needs of our everyday lives. We had come to expect this as a given.

However, every one to two generations we tend to forget these lessons, lulled into complacency about the policies, checks and balances and sound planning that break down when we the citizens do not pay careful attention. Many have heard the statement, “One of the key things we learn from history is that we do not learn from history.”

And here we go again in Ontario.

Over the last 50 years or so, government agencies, academics, professional organizations and NGOs have explored how previous developments had damaged our water resources, water quality, water quantity, rivers, lakes, wetlands and greenspaces through poor planning, design and development. 

I had a bird’s eye view of these impacts during my quarter century at the Ministry of Natural Resources. 

The 1980s and 1990s saw major changes and improvements designed to reduce negative impacts of various types of developments on our landscape and watersheds. To achieve this we built the capacity of government agencies and Conservation Authorities to help implement the science and technology that would help ensure conservation through a series of Provincial Policy Statements that help implement better management.  

We developed watershed analysis and planning to provide the context for better decisions on appropriate development areas and improved designs to ensure key functions of a watershed were protected and would not cause issues in the future. The objective was to shape better developments and management to avoid future financial, physical, property and environmental burdens on people and their communities. An added benefit was healthier local natural environments near appropriate developments, which were needed to address population growth.  

The need to protect these critical ecosystems and greenspaces was clearly seen during the Covid pandemic.  

An added benefit to watershed planning was that developers, municipalities and the public knew up front where the appropriate areas for development were and what standards had to be met; as a result this shortened approval times for projects brought forward by the private sector. This was the REAL approach to reduce red tape.  

Much of this forethought based on 50-plus years of research, discussions and consultation around policy development, alongside established strategies to protect  watersheds, appears to have been thrown out the window by our current provincial government, whose motto seems to be: “Development at all costs”.  

Conservation Authorities and other agencies have been drastically downsized to almost irrelevancy; CAs have had their broader mandate severely constricted so they have no ability to use their expertise to offset the lost abilities of ministries; and the public no longer has the right of appeal through the Ontario Land Tribunal for planning decisions (but developers do).  

And here we are now, making the same mistakes we did in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s and expecting a different result.

Who will benefit? A few. Who will lose? The rest of us.

Our communities and local healthy environments will inevitably suffer. Who will pay for the massive costs of cleaning up the mistakes being made (flooding, degraded water quality; drinking water issues, lost environments, lost species, etc.)? We will.  

It does not have to be so. We just need to learn from history and put back the checks and balances and have a watershed level understanding of consequences, opportunities and appropriate designs. 

Then, we can all confidently say, “We know exactly who is looking after that”.

Jack Imhof is an Aquatic Ecologist/Watershed Scientist who spent 25 years with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. He served as an adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo in the Biology department and held a similar role at the University of Guelph.